Did you know that Richard Bachman... never existed?

If you happened to read a book by Richard Bachman one day and thought, "He has a style similar to Stephen King's," you'd be absolutely right. Because Richard Bachman was Stephen King's pen name .

In the 1970s, Stephen King published novels with growing success. But there was a problem: publishers wouldn't publish more than one book per author per year, for commercial reasons. King, however, was writing faster than the market allowed.

Thus was born Richard Bachman : a fictitious name, complete with a fictional biography (a former New Hampshire farmer suffering from brain cancer) and an art photo borrowed from a friend.

With this name, King also wanted to answer a personal question: " Would my books be successful even if they were published without my name? "

The trick worked for a few years. But in 1985, a Washington bookstore clerk , Steve Brown, compared the narrative styles and noticed too many similarities. Investigating publishing records, he discovered the connection between King and Bachman. He forwarded his discovery to King's agent, who confirmed everything.

King reacted with irony and declared that "Bachman had died of cancer of the pseudonym" .

Here is the complete list of novels written by King under the name Richard Bachman:

• Rage (1977) – A teenager takes his class hostage. Withdrawn from the market after several controversies.
• The Long Walk (1979) – A dystopian future where one hundred kids walk to their deaths for a prize.
• Roadwork (1981) – One man's fight against the system and the destruction of his home.
• The Running Man (1982) – Futuristic thriller, which was adapted into a film of the same name starring Schwarzenegger.
• Thinner (1984) – A lawyer cursed by a gypsy, who begins to lose weight irreversibly.
• The Regulators (1996) – Published post-unmasking, as Bachman's "posthumous work."
• Blaze (2007) – A novel written in the 1970s but published much later. It tells the touching story of a gentle giant and the kidnapping of a newborn baby.

Richard Bachman's secret identity demonstrates how the publishing world can be influenced by names. King wanted to test the power of his books beyond his own brand... and he succeeded, at least in part.

Today, Bachman's novels are reprinted under a double signature, but the experiment remains one of the most fascinating and curious publishing stories in contemporary fiction. An alter ego that never existed, yet left a very real mark on literature.